Tapinos, Dyson and Meadows’s study aims at evaluating the performance impact on the strategic planning process for companies by assessing the factors that affect the achievement of some of the company’s potential benefits. The strategic planning, which provides the benefits of growth to help companies and individuals, allows gathering a sufficient amount of information to meet the future challenges and give the company the necessary guidance, helping it to change the behaviour of individuals in the organization and their contribution to the collective effort.
Tapinos, Dyson and Meadows suggest that there are elements of discipline, formality management and certain jobs in public sphere that cannot exist without planning. Strategic planning processes contributed to defining current trends in the corporate organization management, as well as the organization of individuals’ work (Tapinos, Dyson & Meadows 2005, p. 374).
They also noted that they aimed to define the factors, which increased the effectiveness of strategic planning for companies. According to the results of the research, for most major organizational processes, large strategic planning guidance must be provided. Tapinos, Dyson and Meadows refer to the use of performance measurement in the strategic planning as the means to help managers make choices between the alternatives to reach a satisfactory performance.
Tapinos, Dyson and Meadows have found that strategic planning can and must be used in order to achieve the largest return that a company may have based on its assets, as well as adopt the best opportunities for the working environment and employment. Among the latter, a good trade-off and a clear link between corporate profitability and investment management to ensure that the leader knows when to intervene if the business is deteriorating and the staff’s business performance leaves much to be desired should be mentioned.
The strength of the study comes from Tapinos, Dyson and Meadows recognizing that the strategic planning process is very important and that it is crucial for the company to have key personnel invested into the organization’s success and key activities. In addition, the fact that measuring the staff’s and the company’s overall performance is imperative for the implementation of the planning process in a quick and fairly simple way is very important.
According to the results of the survey, which was chosen as the key tool of the research methodology, the integrated operational plans designed for each area of work help focus on the multiple benefits by building a positive company reputation in the outside community. In addition, the authors of the study consider the issues identified through the research of the strategic planning process using a range of small and large companies and compare the ways, in which research samples can be modified successfully without disrupting the companies’ production process.
In its turn, the impact of performance measurement of the key factors that define the company’s success in the field of strategic planning is evaluated as well. The number of institutions using performance measurement and witnessing an increasing growth in profits, sales and export is huge, since the procedure allows for identifying the obstacles that prevent from improving the employees’ performance.
The research, however, also has its weaknesses, the key one concerning the strategic planning process. Judging by what the researchers suggest, a fixed plan for the future actions is quite hard to modify. A company is likely to face the necessity to change its policies and strategies under the pressure of outside economic and financial factors, such as market fluctuations, customer preferences, changes in demand and supply, emergence of new competitors, appearance of new technology and new opportunities, planning should be a strategic, dynamic and flexible process.
Tapinos, Dyson and Meadows, however, offer little flexibility when suggesting their model for company performance improvement. Hence, the results of the research can be viewed as a solution for the critical conditions that threaten the organization. Naturally, the organization does not come out of the crisis on its own; instead, its leaders must develop a careful plan, create the foundation for further changes and strive for achieving the desired outcomes. A range of obstacles can emerge on the way to organization restructuring and redefinition of the organizational principles; however, these difficulties must not discourage the company’s leader and staff members.
Reference List
Tapinos, E, Dyson, R G & Meadows, M 2-005, ‘The impact of performance management in strategic planning,’ International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol. 54, no. 5/6, pp. 370–385.